Cold Weather Gas Stove Use

In early October, a few friends and I went up to Alaska's North Slope on a caribou hunt. To use firearms, you have to hike five miles off the road, beyond the bow-and-arrow only zone. We knew it would be really important to keep our gear weight to an absolute minimum, as we'd hopefully be packing out an additional few hundred pounds of caribou meat. One way of doing this was the decision to bring my MSR Reactor instead of a heavier liquid-fuel stove, even though temps would be down to about zero degrees, if not colder. I knew I'd have my work cut out to boil water and melt snow for three people for up to four days on the windswept tundra, but I was up for the challenge and hoped my trusty Reactor was, too.

For three days, I warmed and swapped out between two fuel canisters while melting snow and boiling water. We saw temps down to about -5F, maybe colder, while I used the stove both outside on the tundra and inside my GoLite Shangri-La 3. In all usage, I insulated the canister from the snow and cold ground with a one foot by one foot piece of closed-cell foam and used one MSR and one Brunton canister, alternately, warming each before and during the use of the other, and continually trying to keep the canisters at the same temperature and fuel level. I definitely saw a difference between the two.

For the first day and a half, I thought I could see a performance difference between the Brunton and the MSR canisters. The Brunton seemed to perform inadequately when compared to the MSR, but the difference was slight. I routinely had to swap out canisters, on all three days, from every five to fifteen minutes, depending on ambient temperature, canister temperature, and fuel level. Once the canisters got to less-than-full status, however, the MSR ended up spending much more time on the Reactor for the final day and a half, as the Brunton was only good for the time it took me to warm the MSR canister inside my jacket or sleeping bag as I sat and melted snow. Often times, when the temps were colder, I had to prematurely remove the Brunton canister to put on the not-yet-warm MSR can, as the Brunton was just wasting fuel and barely operating the stove. The MSR canister would last noticeably longer than the Brunton, even though it started at a colder canister temperature, as I had plenty of time to warm the Brunton during the MSR canister use, but not the latter.

I would never use a Brunton canister in cold weather again. Until I test JetBoil and SnowPeak canisters, I will only use MSR.

Regarding the actual stove for cold weather usage, get one that has a pre-heat tube and ability to use an inverted remote canister, like the MSR WindPro. Inverting the canister burns the liquid out of the can first and the pre-heat tube turns the liquid into a gas so it can be burned. Inverting a canister on a stove without a pre-heat tube just results in a big flare-up of yellow & orange flame. Don't do this inside a tent!

For essentially everything you'd ever want or need to know about stoves of any kind, please visit Hikin' Jim's blog at adventuresinstoving.blogspot.com